3rd Party Support Contracts - RM & Others

[ChrisERoots]

Hello,

 

I'm just looking for some opinions on 3rd Party Support contracts. We've had support for a variety of 3 line calls for a number of years. Working and supporting a school on my own I need that extra support at times and this year we may well be in the market again for another provider.

 

Over the past 18 months i've had RM on the phone and had them in for discussions at one point too. It seems there product/support offering has changed greatly. Seems people woke up and didn't want to have RM customised networks anymore. Go figure. On inspection of their support offerings they can tailor it to whatever you need and you're able to pay (at the time) a very competitive price for support.

 

Just wondering if any Edugeekers are supported by them or should I give them a wide berth? If any one knows any other company that would be able to offer some kind of 3rd line support agreement to help troubleshoot problems with our Server setup please let me know.

[JackCPickup]

What area are you?

 

What sort of 3rd line support do you need? Are you running an RM network or vanilla Windows?

[APMerry]

I've worked in 2 RM schools (including the 1 i'm currently at) and I've found their support to be a bit hit and miss recently. You generally get through to 1st line who ask a lot of basic questions and get you to try things you've probably already done. Having said that, if you can get passed this 1st line barrier the 2nd/3rd line support guys are pretty good and I've found it very beneficial having someone I can call for things like our Meru network.

[Duranis]

When I started here we had a number of support contracts going, one of them with RM. They were completely useless, took forever to get information from them and when I did it was not correct (information about their own product).

Your location will dictate your choice to a degree but if your anywhere near Kent I would highly recommend EIS. They did most of the heavy IT stuff here before I started and even though we don't have the "full support" type contract with them anymore I still call on their assistance from time to time. As a solo tech here it has been a sanity saver on more than one occasion to be able to make a call and speak to someone about a problem. They have done a LOT of work with RM systems so if that's what your running they can help with that as well. They have solved more than one issue I have had with CC4 which RM took forever to not fix.

 

EIS – LET'S KEEP IT SIMPLE

[ChrisERoots]

Thanks for the response. So i'm in Manchester. I would imagine going to a company of that size would result in a fairly hit and miss level of support. Our network is a Vanilla variety. Before BSF it was an RM school and we still have a couple old servers ready for collection. What impressed me to begin with was the fact that you could get a tailored package of support.

 

Day to Day, i'm fine with 2nd & a fair chunk of 3rd line stuff. There's times when I really need support investigating and sorting out problems with Switches, some Email routing stuff from time to time and server issues that feel more like large gremlins running round the network. We currently get support from one company locally and they are excellent. However, the contract is up and whatever happens we will have to go to tender.

[Andycat]

We use Chess ICT, used to be Lanway.

 

They've won most tenders of ours the last few years, and installed our Vanilla network (from CC4) last year. Good engineers in our experience, and not too pricey.

[Bedders]

The Academy in the North-West I used to work at used Virtue Technologies. The company I'm working at now uses ITLabs who are based in Manchester. I would highly recommend both in terms of support provided.